It`s `Fantastique`

Ralph Shapey Turns Mellow - Even Toward The Cso

November 10, 1991|By John von Rhein, Music critic.

For the past two decades, Ralph Shapey and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra have gone their separate ways, refusing to acknowledge one another, an embarrassing state of affairs for the nation`s leading symphony orchestra and the town`s most important composer.

Shapey dates their war of silence from the early 1970s, early in Georg Solti`s tenure, when he says the former CSO music director promised the orchestra would commission him to write a work for soprano and orchestra. The commission never occurred, and Solti went 22 seasons without ever conducting a Shapey score.

So Shapey, a stubbornly proud man who has long deplored the increasing popularization of symphonic music and concomitant downgrading of new music in the United States, washed his hands of the downtown musical establishment and retreated to his academic aerie at the University of Chicago, where he has taught composition and directed the Contemporary Chamber Players since 1964. The last time Shapey and the CSO collaborated was in 1968 at Mandel Hall, where Shapey conducted the premiere of his Violin Concerto (``Incantations``) with Esther Glazer as soloist.

Now, lo and behold, the CSO and Shapey are behaving like long-estranged friends who have agreed to patch up their differences and make another go of it. To honor the composer`s many contributions to the cultural life of the city, members of the CSO will join with several of Shapey`s colleagues and students in a 70th birthday celebration of music and conversation.

Orchestra Hall will be the scene of a day-long musical tribute in two concerts, 3 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday, when pianist Gilbert Kalish, soprano Elsa Charlston (Shapey`s wife) and various Chicago Symphony musicians will perform works by Shapey, his students and composers who have influenced him, including Beethoven, Edgard Varese and Stefan Wolpe.

Between concerts, there will be an informal discussion of Shapey`s music and philosophy by the composer and CSO composer-in-residence (and former Shapey pupil) Shulamit Ran. General admission tickets for the day are $10.

The Shapey birthday marathon will come just 11 days before the CSO gives the world premiere of Shapey`s ``Concerto Fantastique,`` a nearly hour-long work commissioned jointly by the CSO and University of Chicago in honor of their centennials. Performances are scheduled for the Nov. 21-23 subscription concerts at Orchestra Hall, with Daniel Barenboim conducting.

Although he declines to characterize it as such, Shapey cannot pretend that the CSO premiere of ``Concerto Fantastique`` isn`t a major moral victory. ``How does it feel to have the Chicago Symphony performing my music again? I`ll let you know after the concert!`` he exclaims, breaking into raucous laughter. Then, turning serious, he says, ``Look, it`s very simple. The Chicago Symphony is one of the great orchestras of the world; every composer would like to write a work for them. For me, it finally happened, and I`m happy about it.``

These days, Shapey seems harmless enough, a small, jovial man framed by white whiskers and curls of smoke from a perpetually lit cigar, his conversation punctuated by irreverent asides and unprintable epithets. He wears a hearing aid in each ear and insists he is in good health despite an angina condition. ``My doctor is very proud that he is keeping me alive and quasi-healthy with 30 pills a day,`` he observes, wryly.

Muted is the bitterness Shapey once voiced as a result of what he felt was the unfair and often politically motivated neglect of his work during his years in New York (1945-64) and the mistreatment of his music later by various conductors and orchestras. The composer who from 1969 to 1976 declared a worldwide moratorium on performances of his music to protest what he called

``all the rottenness in the world`` has actually become sort of benign.

Which is not to say he has greatly curbed his tongue or his penchant for recycling his best anecdotes and one-liners. When asked, for example, about his forced retirement earlier this year from the University of Chicago faculty, he snorted, ``It`s age discrimination, let`s face it, but there`s nothing I can do about it.``

Shapey continues to direct the city`s finest new music ensemble, the Contemporary Chamber Players, at least for the current season; he hasn`t made up his mind whether he will stay on past 1992. Beyond that, he remains almost despite himself a Chicago institution, the primary driving force among Chicago composers, the city`s liberal conscience of new music, an inimitable and irreplaceable fixture on the musical landscape.

Never mind that there is no such thing as a Shapey school of Chicago composers. Never mind that local composers still tend to regard him as warily as he does them.